Hello guys, we all have heard about GMOs and maybe have seen the labels on Supermarket where ''NON GMO'' is written. There is maybe a misconception (or not?) especially now with the eruption of the trend of ''a healthy and better lifestyle'' and all the GMO products are in decline. Before we judge something i believe we should make our research and then decide whether is good for us or not, but first let's explain what the term GMO means.

GMO Explained

GMO acronym stands for Genetically modified organism and is a process where a microorganism, a plant or animal has it's genes modified using genetic engineering or transgenic technology in order to give them some traits for a number of reasons like: (according to this link)

• Insect-Disease Resistance: That is the number 1 reason for me. I have very little experience in farming but i have witnessed crops being destroyed by diseases in a day. Also in my village we had an issue with a rare uprising of some worms that ate everything! I bet you all have a story like that or have heard in the news or a farmer talking about it!
• More Nutrients: Basically, the whole idea behind it is to make super crops, with enhanced protein,low fats and other nutritious elements.  
• Improved Manufacturing Processes: As they can modify the crops they can make them efficient in certain processes. An example is thae corn as a biofuel with the modifications it can save water and electricity from the whole production process. 
• Decrease in Food Waste: as some fruits and vegetables may change color like brown,purple and in the eyes of everyone may look like expired and garbage with the modifications the process of changing colors can be take some time more
   

The 2 ''Schools''

Behind all of this fuss there are to sides of the same coin. One side that supports the GMO and only think that does good and the exact opposite side that believes that GMO harm everything. Both sides have scientists and companies behind them as well as farmers and normal people. We will try to take a deeper look to what their arguments are as objectively as we can but first we need to learn a thing or two about the production, how much is it and where in the world we can buy these products.

GMO Around The World And History

Before we start criticizing everything we need to understand that humanity always modified things from plants to animals and wolves-dogs is a good example. Humanity always chose the best plants and animals with the best traits and tried to breed them and if i wanna take it a step further and i will ''we'' as humanity breed the strongest slaves in order to have always stronger and stronger to do the heavy building jobs we wanted. Below you can check an infographic that can inform you briefly about the history

source 

Now let's move on to where GMO products produce,exist and banned. 

The top five countries that produce GMO products are (from the top to bottom) USA,Brazil,Argentina,Canada,India and from 2016 GMO products are grown and used in 75 countries and in USA and Canada labels aren't required.

 

source

On the other hand 64 countries around the world as well as every country in the EU have as a must to write on labels when the products are GMO or NON GMO.

https://gmoanswers.com/sites/default/files/ISAAA_2016-Highlights%20Infographic.pdf

Are Gmos Safe?

i believe there is no way to find the correct answer here but let's see what the 2 sides have brought into table. The supporters say absolutely yes as you may have imagined and justify their arguments using a report by The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine with 20 experts on a panel talking about the 20 years of GMOs history and reviewing many tests and reports that were made resulting that GMO are totally ok and safe for us and by no means they can cause allergies and cancer. 

The Other side supports the exact opposite and as their first argument they support the fact that there countries that completely banned to farm and grow GMO products so that might mean something. Also at 2015 a statement from 300 scientists released that basically says that social media lie that the scientific community has totally approved the GMO products and that much more research is needed cause the results aren't that clear after all. 

Finally, there's a ''war'' of myths and facts that both sides take part in using studies and in case you wanna see more deeply the arguments click here for the supporters and here for the people against it

Do These Products Help The Farmers?

Although in some cases GMO products could be beneficial they can create issues to. A good think as i mentioned in the beginning of the post is that the products are more tolerant in diseases,insects,pesticides and that can help in bigger production. A good example is Bangladesh that has huge fields with eggplants that got destroyed by diseases and insects. When the farmers used pesticides to deal with that, they got sick and lose a lot of money to buy them in the progress too, so in 2013 with the introduction of a GMO Eggplant everything went back to normal and increased their crops!

On the other hand and according to the study that busted a lot of myths herbicides use, increased dramatically and a reason behind this is that these crops are engineered to used with glyphosate-based herbicides. The rise of herbicides led to the rise of tolerant weed and crops and farmers have to spray more of this resulting in the exact opposite from what we said earlier, losing money and even destroy their farm's soil.

My Personal View

I really don't think GMO techniques are that bad and i honestly believe if more money were given for research the results would be amazing. Imagine to have more tolerant and nutritious products, even products that people because of some allergy or something couldn't eat but in the future they could. The possibilities are endless but my main issue is the companies behind GMOs products and the N1 company behind is Monsanto a company that in my opinion had brought so much harm into the planet and it's employees. Just a single fact, their Roundup which is a glyphosate-based herbicide is considered toxic! 

So the problem once again is not the GMOs products but lies within the companies that try anything for their sake and their greed and don't get me wrong, i don't have issues with generally the companies, only with the ones that try to take advantage of everything. Till now i haven't eaten GMO products ( that at least i know of :P ), i am mostly eating biological products that their taste rocks but in future who knows!

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Sources
https://gmoanswers.com/where-gmos-are-grown

https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/

http://livingnongmo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/GMO-Myths-and-Truths-edition2.pdf